The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a technology to transport Ethernet services, especially Ethernet Bridged services, typically over a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) core network. A Service Provider (SP) may give the customer redundant connectivity to one or more sites by what is often called multi-homing active/standby redundancy, whereby a customer device is connected to both an active VPLS node and a standby VPLS node. The customer device communicates frames of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) instance with an active VPLS node, but not the standby VPLS node. In case of failure in communications with the active VPLS node, the customer device ceases communicating frames of the VPN instance with that VPLS node, and begins communicating frames with the previously standby, now active, VPLS node.